NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge on Tuesday issued an injunction blocking a firearms company from selling after-market triggers that let gun enthusiasts convert AR-15 style rifles into weapons that can shoot as fast as machine guns.
U.S. District Judge Nina Morrison in Brooklyn said the federal government was likely to prove that the “forced-reset” FRT-15 triggers sold by Rare Breed Triggers LLC and its owners were illegal machine gun conversion devices.
“Defendants fraudulently induced their customers to buy a product that is illegal to posses–falsely representing that the FRT-15s was ‘absolutely’ legal, while withholding material information in their possession that revealed otherwise,” Morrison wrote in a 129-page decision.
Lawyers for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The office of U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn did not immediately respond to a similar request.
Morrison ruled six days after U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas temporarily barred the government from enforcing the forced-reset trigger ban against three people, calling the ban “likely unlawful.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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